Roger Cuvillier and the Pan Cinor Zoom Lens

Roger Cuvillier, along with colleagues Lucien Reymond and Raymond Rosier, was one of the key inventors behind the SOM-Berthiot “Pan Cinor” zoom lens, which was marketed by the Paillard companies.

In American film and television production the Pan Cinor can be seen as a bridge between the Zoomar lens, which was widely used for television production but hardly used for film production, and the Angenieux 10x lens, which became popular in the 1950s.

The following interview (in French) with Roger Cuvillier gives some further information about the development of the Pan Cinor, though note that the YouTube description of this video erroneously describes the Pan Cinor as the first zoom lens!